The 'World's Tiniest Book' Fits in Half a Poppy Seed

Forget reading glasses—you’ll need a microscope to peruse what some people are calling the “world’s smallest book.”

According to RT News, a Russian microminiature artist named Vladimir Aniskin spent a month crafting two 70-by-90 micrometer works by hand. Their pages were fashioned from polyester film, bound with tiny rings of micron tungsten wires, and printed using lithography. The books are so miniscule that Aniskin displays them on poppy seed halves. If you want to turn their pages, you’ll have to use a sharpened needle.

Aniskin is planning on submitting his books to Guinness World Records for verification. He told The Guardian that the works are 88 times smaller than the current world record holder for smallest printed book, a 0.74-by-0.75 millimeter Japanese manuscript called Flowers of the Four Seasons. They’re also reportedly tinier than his own country’s record-holding book, a 0.644-by-0.660 millimeter creation that contains the lyrics to the Russian national anthem.

One of Aniskin’s books is named Levsha after Nikolai Leskov’s 1881 story, The Steel Flea. In honor of the tale’s main character, a talented village craftsman who nails “flea shoes” onto a clockwork flea, the book lists the names of real-life microminiaturists Aniskin considers to be as skilled as the fictional hero. The second book, Alphabet, is a record of the Russian alphabet.

While the two books only took Aniskin a month to make, he says he spent five years perfecting their underlying technology. Now that he’s fully mastered the craft, Aniskin plans to make 10 books of Levsha and Alphabet—now he just needs to find the world's smallest bookstore to sell them in.